21-17

THE INTIMIDATOR

I know I said I don't care about the Super Bowl, but if you're anything like me there were a few instances where you were thrust from your throne of ambivalence and made to hop around like you were being controlled by a drunken marionette operator. I had no vested interest in either team, my enthusiasm was wrought from the admiration of skill and effort. The instinct that I had indicating a Giants win held true but it was all gut. My capacity for drinking heavy beers was dramatically overstated.

The reason I'm approaching my Super Bowl review with zero analysis or play by play is because I think there are a ton of people like me who watched and enjoyed despite who might win. I missed the Eastwood commercial so I can't give that credit for getting all jacked up, but I went in to the second half energized and focused, which is way more than I can say for most events that I don't deem sobriety worthy. Perhaps it was Madonna's innovative and unprecedented call for world peace... either way.

Admittedly, and probably horribly evident in my writing, my sports renaissance occurred later in my life. Unlike other Wisconsinite 80's babies who carry with them vivid memories of Favre's green and gold victories, my youth was spent collecting awful punk compilations and adhering to since-proven-fairweather politics. Still, I've been absorbing sports and sports information at such an intense frequency over the past half of a decade that not everything Wisconsin sports can excite me anymore. My loyalty towards a team is less about uniform and more about athletic performance. So, it goes without saying that the Super Bowl, the cumulative showdown resulting from a series of one and done games, shouldn't be exciting. This game was.

It's refreshing to shut off the sports scope and just watch a bunch of dudes put there heart in to the game. Even the slop and the imprecision were noted by passion and intensity. Grit can be what separates a boring blowout or low-scoring  snore fest from a fucking awesome game, which we were given on Sunday. I'm happy for both teams and don't even really care that the Packers didn't make it this year.

I also want to think Scrimshaw Pilsner for being an excellent accompaniment to the implicit indulgence that comes along with watching a football game with friends and family.